Chrome: Google prides itself on search, but for all of that pride, searching for items in Gmail still can feel like a tedious process, even if you know what you're looking for and just want to unearth it. However, with an app like Greplin connected to your Gmail account, you can find archived messages faster and with less fuss. Here's how.

We've talked about Greplin before, back when the service launched in private beta, and then again when it opened its doors to everyone with the hopes of making it easier to search your entire online life, not just your desktop. Now the service is taking its bag of tricks over to Gmail, and brings features like real-time results and instant search suggestions to Gmail search. The app also allows you to search partial-words and see the same matches as if you typed the whole word.

Greplin indexes data you store in the cloud and provides a quick and simple search to let you find…
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To use Greplin with Gmail, you'll want to install the recently-updated Greplin Chrome extension and connect it with your Gmail account. Gmail is the most recently supported service, but Greplin can also connect to your Facebook, Twitter, Dropbox, or LinkedIn accounts and index the data stored there for high-speed searches.

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Greplin promises that once you have it installed and hooked up to your Gmail account, searching through your ever-growing mass of Gmail will be faster than ever, and they certainly keep that promise. Gmail searches that previously took several seconds and returned only marginally useful results transformed into searches that gave us more relevant messages, and took mere moments to complete. The speed improvement was surprisingly noticeable.

If you opt to use the service with other supported Web services, you can visit your account at Greplin or use the extension to search everything at once. If you just want to search Gmail, a new magnifying glass on your Gmail search bar will keep your searches limited to the mail in your account, but only as long as you have the Chrome extension installed. Remove that or use another browser, and you'll have to use the Greplin site for Greplin-powered searches.

The tool works as advertised (which is great), but it's important to note the privacy implications of a service like Greplin. If you hook it up with Gmail, for example, Greplin has access to all of your email in its index. Their privacy policy is pretty sewn up, but if you (understandably) don't want to give another company access to so much information, Greplin probably isn't for you.

The Greplin chrome extension is completely free to use with services like Gmail, Google Docs, Twitter, Facebook, and Linkedin. If you want the service to index your professional or enterprise accounts on services like Salesforce, Basecamp, Evernote, or Highrise, you'll have to sign up for a paid account, starting at $4.99/month.